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Russian Nationalism Russian Nationalism This book, by one of the foremost authorities on the subject, explores the complex nature of Russian nationalism. It examines nationalism as a multi- layered and multifaceted repertoire displayed by a myriad of actors. It considers nationalism as various concepts and ideas emphasizing Russia’s distinctive national character, based on the country’s geography, history, Orthodoxy, and Soviet technological advances. It analyzes the ideologies of Russia’s ultra- nationalist and far-right groups, explores the use of nationalism in the conflict with Ukraine and the annexation of Crimea, and discusses how Putin’s political opponents, including Alexei Navalny, make use of nationalism. Overall the book provides a rich analysis of a key force which is profoundly affecting political and societal developments both inside Russia and beyond. Marlene Laruelle is a Research Professor of International Affairs at the George Washington University, Washington, DC. BASEES/Routledge Series on Russian and East European Studies Series editors: Judith Pallot (President of BASEES and Chair) University of Oxford Richard Connolly University of Birmingham Birgit Beumers University of Aberystwyth Andrew Wilson School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University College London Matt Rendle University of Exeter This series is published on behalf of BASEES (the British Association for Sla- vonic and East European Studies). The series comprises original, high- quality, research- level work by both new and established scholars on all aspects of Russian, Soviet, post- Soviet and East European Studies in humanities and social science subjects. 124 Belarus under Lukashenka Adaptive Authoritarianism Matthew Frear 125 Class Cultures in Post-Socialist Eastern Europe Dražen Cepić 126 Belarus – Alternative Visions Nation, Memory and Cosmopolitanism Simon Lewis 127 Russian Culture in the Era of Globalisation Edited by Vlad Strukov and Sarah Hudspith 128 Security, Society and the State in the Caucasus Edited by Kevork Oskanian and Derek Averre 129 Russian Nationalism Imaginaries, Doctrines, and Political Battlefields Marlene Laruelle For a full list of available titles please visit: www.routledge.com/BASEES- Routledge-Series-on-Russian- and-East- European-Studies/book- series/BASEES Russian Nationalism Imaginaries, Doctrines, and Political Battlefields Marlene Laruelle First published 2019 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2019 Marlene Laruelle The right of Marlene Laruelle to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. The Open Access version of this book, available at www.taylorfrancis. com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record has been requested for this book ISBN: 978-1-138-38652-5 (hbk) ISBN: 978-0-429-42677-3 (ebk) Typeset in Times New Roman by Wearset Ltd, Boldon, Tyne and Wear Contents List of tables vii Introduction 1 PART I Nationalism as imperial imaginary: cosmos, geography, and ancient past 17 1 Cosmism: Russian messianism at a time of technological modernity 19 2 Larger, higher, farther north …: Russia’s geographical metanarratives 37 3 Alternate history and New Chronology: rewriting Russia’s past 55 PART II Nationalism as doctrine: experimenting with new repertoires 71 4 Beyond Slavophilism: the rise of Aryanism and neo- paganism 73 5 A textbook case of doctrinal entrepreneurship: Aleksandr Dugin 95 6 Pamiat 2.0? The Izborskii Club, or the new conservative avant- garde 134 vi Contents PART III Nationalism as political battlefield: in the streets, for or against the Kremlin 153 7 Black shirts, White Power: the changing faces of the far right 155 8 Aleksei Navalny and the Natsdem: a pro- Western nationalism? 174 9 The three colors of Novorossiya, or the mythmaking of the Ukrainian war 195 References 214 Index 240 Tables I.1 Four broad directions for Russian nationalism 7 I.2 A schematic table of “Russian Nationalism” and its relationship to state structures 10 Introduction This book is comprised of nine chapters, many of which have been published previously as articles in peer-reviewed journals or as chapters in edited volumes.1 All have been updated and reframed to create a unified whole that provides a comprehensive picture of the phenomenon of “Russian nationalism.” There are many ways of interpreting the amorphous term “nationalism.” In this book I explore it as a multilayered and multifaceted repertoire: nationalism as an impe- rial imaginary of the nation; nationalism as an experiment of doctrines and ideo- logies; and nationalism as a political battlefield between grassroots actors and state structures. A brief history of “Russian nationalism” studies2 Western scholarship on Russia has always devoted substantial attention to national identity issues, both to explain Russia’s “difference” from the West and as part of a mirror game with Russia’s national tradition of debating the so-called Russian Idea. Although the study of identity in Russia includes a broad spectrum of approaches that encompass all branches of the social sciences and humanities – identity may be social, religious, ethnic, gender, regional, or economic in addi- tion to national – the study of “Russian nationalism” has become a research field in its own right. As a scholarly topic, the term emerged in the 1960s with works on imperial Russia’s main schools of thought: Slavophilism, Pan-Slavism, and conserva- tism.3 This rediscovery of nineteenth-century Russian political philosophy took on a life of its own in the Cold War context, as the consensus grew that a know- ledge of Marxism and revolutionary thinking was no longer enough to compre- hend Soviet society and Soviet foreign policy. A new wave of Western scholarship thus examined Russian conservative traditions, which had previously been overlooked in favor of revolutionary authors and Russia’s rich leftist schools of thought. In the second half of the 1970s and the early 1980s, the emphasis changed from nineteenth-century conservative philosophies to contemporary Soviet society, as authors such as John Dunlop, Alexander Yanov, and Walter Laqueur drew attention to what they defined as a “revival” of Russian nationalism.4 These 2 Introduction authors identified and examined a paradox: the rising interest in topics identified as nationalist among Soviet dissidents and the parallel growth in interest among the official Soviet intelligentsia. This included the rediscovery of the imperial past and the protection of Russia’s historical legacy and nature, expressed mostly through “village prose” literature and art.5 It also took the form of an informal “Russian Party” within state and Communist Party structures, targeting more pragmatic goals such as dissociating the RSFSR (Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic) institutions from the pan-Soviet ones and fighting to promote Russians as a weakened nation endangered by the Soviet federal construction.6 The perestroika years and the collapse of the Soviet Union inaugurated a “golden age” for studying nationalism, which was no longer confined to Russia but encompassed all the (post-)Soviet nations.7 The deep upheavals of these countries, which had become independent in very different political contexts, were interpreted as a “reawakening” of the peoples once under Russian/Soviet domination. “Nationalism” thus tended to be conceived within a binary schema: the nationalism of the non-Russian peoples, insofar as it was democratic and anti-colonial – often correlated with the pro-democratic “popular fronts” of the Gorbachev years – was deemed healthy. But that of the Russians – symbolized by Pamiat, the main “cadres’ school” and umbrella organization of Russian nationalists, which had a strong anti-Semitic and reactionary bent – was criti- cized as conservative, autocratic, and imperialistic.8 Few works at the time sought to recognize and explore this implicit distinc- tion between good and bad nationalism, a categorization that hinged on whether the nationalism under discussion was seen as pro- or anti-reform – an issue that is still critical in today’s readings of what nationalism means politically. The intuitive character of this binary and its immediate policy implications for Western countries’ foreign policy – namely supporting the new states against a historically dominant Russia – were enough to render it legitimate. The dearth of studies on the nationalist features of Russian liberal politicians, from Boris Yeltsin to Egor Gaidar and Anatolii Chubais, is evidence of the difficulty many Western observers had in pinning the “nationalism” label on the political allies of the moment. The same trend would reappear 20 years later with the reluctance of Western pundits to describe President Vladimir Putin’s main opponent, Alexei Navalny, as a “nationalist.” In the 1990s, this dual schema continued to develop. Studying “Russian nationalism” was always part of a broader discourse about
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